donderdag 31 januari 2013

Steam and gaming in Linux Mint

Gaming is booming and is one of the most inspiring,
exciting and innovative form of art in the IT industry. 2012 was an
impressive year. With a global market of $67 billion gaming studios hire
the most talented developers, artists, writers, and professionals and
provide a huge selection of quality games. The budget and production are
so high it’s becoming easier to choose a good game than to find a good
movie these days… but most of them work on Windows, Xbox 360 or
Playstation 3.
Just as “killer-apps”, games are among the top reasons which prevent
people from switching completely to Linux. In 2012, 15 games were scored
90% or higher on Metacritic. None of them were released on Linux.
A couple of things happened though and the future might look a little brighter for Linux gamers.
2012 was a big year for “Indie gaming”. Independent developers
challenged major studios with games like Minecraft, The Walking Dead and
Journey. The fact that a few developers could achieve so much, without
resources, changed the perception of many. Then came the Humble Bundles
which sent two strong signals: Linux users want games and they’re ready
to pay for them.
At the end of last year, Valve and Canonical announced they were
working together to bring Steam (which is estimated to have a 70% share
of the digital distribution market for video games) to Linux. Their
efforts paid off and the Steam client is now available and working fine
in most distributions.
The screenshot below shows Steam running on Linux Mint 14:
Valve is planning a new gaming console in 2013 based on Linux and the
company is currently promoting its Linux client, even to its Windows
users. Gaming media, blogs and magazines are covering the news and some
of the major studios are considering porting their games to Linux.
If you like strategy games for instance, you’ll be happy to know Paradox Interactive already ported Crusader Kings II.
Crusader Kings II was given a 8/10 by IGN and Gamespot and a 9/10 by
Destructoid. It is one of the very good strategy games of 2012. Other
popular games are likely to follow; some old ones like Counter Strike
1.6 or Half Life, or brand new ones like “The Cave”.
If you’re into gaming and you’d like to play on Linux Mint, don’t hesitate to get involved and to send Valve your feedback:

We’d also like to hear from you on how you’d like us to improve or facilitate things for you in regards to gaming on Linux Mint.
Note: Most popular games are commercial and developed by major
studios, so if they come to Linux they’re likely to become available
through Steam. However, if you’re interested in HTML5 or online gaming
or if you have ideas on how to further promote Indie gaming and Free
Software games, please let us know. Many Windows games also run quite
well using Wine. We like for things to work out of the box, but maybe we
can help here as well. Don’t hesitate to comment if you’ve some
experience to share with Wine or wine-related software.